I had an interesting conversation with an escape room owner the other day that changes the way I think about rating escape rooms and providing feedback.
It has long been my stance to avoid casting favorites or making broad statements like “this room is good,” “this room is bad,” or “this puzzle wasn’t great” due to the subjectivity of what makes an escape room enjoyable. Given that I’ve solved an uncommon number of rooms, there are naturally things I hate that I think newcomers will love, and things I love that I can imagine newcomers hating. I can always speculate on how the average customer might react to something, but without the data to confirm that, I usually stay quiet about it, fearing I’ll give the impression that I want escape rooms to bend to my own personal whims.
This has led to somewhat of a bias in what I write about. With a huge backlog of reviews to write, I tend to stick to writing about experiences that are unique, enjoyable, and far from home, in which I get to describe what I liked, while being hesitant to blast something I felt contributed to a negative experience.
A conversation with Jim from Paradox Squared in Woodstock, IL changed the way I look at this. Jim is one of the most passionate owners I know. He offers a very unique experience- well-designed rooms with great puzzles and an immersive experience that starts in the lobby; the game master greets the team in-character and stays that way throughout the entire game.
After our last game at Paradox Squared, my team sat down with Jim to chat about the room and about escape rooms in general, and Jim asked us to shout our opinions from the rooftops- to go on review sites and praise the rooms we love and post negatively about rooms we dislike.
Jim offered a few examples about how feedback he received or observed over time helped him to sculpt his own rooms into experiences that better suited customers. As someone who takes customer feedback very seriously, Jim described how a low-rated review is a great tool for improving the overall quality of the escape room industry. If a business gets a low rated review, it can react and improve. If it doesn’t improve, it’ll get more low star reviews that’ll advise other customers to stay away, which will improve the industry as a whole.
As someone who has spent years working to build strategies for incorporating customer feedback into action, I strongly agree with what Jim said, and I’m going to take Jim’s feedback and use it to change my own strategy. A negative review used well is more valuable than a Google or Yelp score a few points higher. A three star review with constructive criticism is a better gift than a five star review. Sure, maybe it’ll make the difference between a 4.8 and a 4.9 for some new business looking to draw customers, but that 0.1 difference is a small price to pay for knowing how to please all varieties of customers, enthusiasts included.
I’m glad to have chatted with Jim about the importance of calling out ways escape rooms can provide better experiences. I can think back to a few examples where an owner could have taken a little feedback and gone a long way with it, and I have a handful of other cases where the escape room was essentially a cash grab thrown together in a day, where I could have done a better job warning away other unsuspecting customers.
I still want to add disclaimers about my own personal preferences- I want to make it abundantly clear that I don’t speak for other escape room players, not even other escape room enthusiasts, except by speculation where I can comment on design elements that would delight certain types of players. Nor do others speak for me- I find I often disagree heavily with online reviews and common generalizations about what makes a great room, and sometimes escape room owners mention an axiom I strongly disagree with (i.e. “Players hate physical locks”).
So my new commitment is to be true to my own preferences and provide at least one data point that may serve escape room owners to paint a clearer picture of how their diverse customer pool reacts to their games.
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